Speaker

Herbert L. Dershem

Hope College

Computer Science

616-395-7508

dershem@hope.edu

Great Debates in Computer Science: Data Representation

At many points in the development of the field of computer science debates have arisen over the direction of the field. One such debate was over how to represent data. Today we take for granted that computers represent data using the binary positional system. In this talk we will explore the alternatives that were considered, why they were discarded, and how those alternatives might prove valuable in the future of computing.